


It's been 2 years since I've been Home

by thatdragonchic



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Mac is trying to move forward, Moving, jack has adopted Mac, learning to adult, mac and jack early friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 12:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18120911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdragonchic/pseuds/thatdragonchic
Summary: Mac spends a year on the Dalton ranch, but now they're in California, and he needs a place to live. He has no idea how to move into a house, and well, that's what Jack is there for.ORJack helps Mac move into his grandfathers house when they start working at DXS





	It's been 2 years since I've been Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the lovely Maja <3   
> I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

It was the pulse of the beating sun on the California pavement, fresh with the plants that grew outside, the smell of chlorine from the neighbors pool, and moss from the pool below the deck, and ash from the long unused firepit- Mac had once called this place home. He’d once ran threw here with Bozer, and dove into the pool, lush with bright blue water, and they’d once sat by the fire pit, drying off, as his grandfather attempted something that resembled a barbecue, before they finally just called the Burger Place and had food delivered. 

“Man the locks on this place are busted- it’s a miracle you ain’t got robbed,” he hears Jack say. It’s been 2 years since he’s been here, since he’d last seen his grandfather before he was embalmed and doll like in a casket, with just enough makeup to make him look lively. Like he might wake up and just step out of the casket and say  _ what’s going on Folks?  _ And they’d all laugh- what a trickster Harry Macgyver could be, they’d say, and Mac would smile, and wipe his tears, and Harry would laugh that somebody had got the boy in a damn suit. 

Mac let’s his fingers trace the couches, the leather coated in dust. He wonders if he went to the closet if his grandfather's clothes would still smell like him or if they’d smell like mothballs and old linen sheets. He takes a deep breath, trying to suck in his tears, it felt like yesterday that he was laying on the couch with a thunderstorm rumbling overhead, and Harry would tell him that California should be blessed it ever got any rain. 

They’d count the rolls of thunder to see how far away it was, and sometimes, they’d make a cake, the kind from the Pillsbury boxes, and bake it while waiting. And then they’d turn on  _ I love Lucy  _ and let it play in the background on the old box of a television, all the tricks and knobs included and the static from the speaker come through as rain played in the back. Mac used to think it must have been great to live in the 1950’s, there always seemed a magic and a charm to his grandfather's life, before he had Mac. 

“And hey- we gotta do somethin about that pool, that thing is a  _ swamp  _ man- Mac, you okay buddy?”

Mac zones back into the world, his shoulders slumping as he exhales, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Yeah… I just could never bring myself to come back to here,” he admits. “I kept telling myself it wasn’t real until I was here, and he wasn’t… you know?”

Jack nods, walking over, clasping a hand over Mac’s shoulder and Mac looks around, at the old paintings on the wall, and the ugly colored carpet. “I did the same when my daddy died, couldn’t walk into the parlor, or his office for a long time. Couldn’t even walk into his room with my mama, because I knew he’d never be in them again. And if I went into them, I’d stand there, lookin for him, imaginin’ he’s there…”

“But he won’t be.”

“Yeah…”

Mac nods, looking over the ugly burgundy carpet, and he remembers laying there, making little experiments, with those toy car race tracks, trying to find the perfect angles to make them flip, or send them shooting off into the hoops he set up. That had been so long ago now- hadn’t it? Jack smacks him back into reality- literally- shoving him forward a bit from the force on his shoulder, and he decides they’re wiping the whole place down and cleaning out the fridge. 

“We don’t have cleaning supplies… or garbage bags.”

Jack laughs, fond and fatherly. Mac expects to be scolded, but Jack just grabs his keys. “Then let’s go get em. Can’t live her if it’s all dusty like this, and how bout we pass by mine for the vacuum? Wouldn’t hurt to get all the dust out of that carpet. Open up the damn windows so we don’t suffocate.” 

 

\- The Nearest Grocery Store They Could Find, which was Conveniently, 45 Minutes Away  _ before  _ LA Traffic - 

“I mean, Clorox wipes won’t like… bleach the leather, will they?”

“No but it sure as hell will ruin the leather.”

Mac nods, putting it down. “What about-”

“Not windex either kid. Just let Daddy Dalton take care of it,” he says, matter of fact with an added lilt of sarcasm. Jack spends a few minutes, pacing the aisle, letting his eyes scan each shelf thoroughly before picking up the bottle of leather cleaner, three packs of sponges, and has Mac grab two bottles of clorox wipes, and windex anyways. “Bathroom cleaner- we need that too.”

Mac nods, and somehow he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have figured that out for himself. They get the heavy duty stuff, and Jack grabs anything he’s pretty sure will help. Mac feels helpless and clueless, just the kid holding the basket as Jack fills it with cleaners. 

“Kid’s movin’ in,” Jack tells the cashier who looks at the odd amount of cleaning supplies on their conveyer belt. They nod, slightly unphased, and Mac bags all the groceries and lets Jack drive them home. He doesn’t argue too long about letting Jack pay, because Jack sticks his card into the machine before Mac can even really say  _ no.  _

They spend the rest of the night on their knees, scrubbing the kitchen tile, and bathroom floors, and the rust of the sink, and throwing out the shower hands after thoroughly cleaning all the showers and baths. Jack’s small, basic vacuum right out of the BJ’s cleaning section isn’t going to do the trick, so they find the nearest carpet cleaners, and found it was cheaper to just rent their very tricked out vacuum instead of their services. “I definitely…. Could have made this,” Mac says, as they squint at the buttons. “If I can just figure out the… well… huh,” he says as he presses a few buttons and the vacuum starts to do one thing or other, and for once, Jack watches as the kid is thoroughly stumped, frowning at the weird suction noise the vacuum was making. “I think it’s dying,” he says over the noise.

Jack turns it off, laughing. “I think we need to clean these carpets. Go start on cleaning the kitchen sink. Use that uhh- that bleach stuff.” 

Mac nods, and he figures out which chemicals to use on a sink than he does the vacuum. The sink is sparkling, and he throws away the old dish rack, and finds dishes that remained in the dishwasher from two years ago, before his grandfather had died. 

A deep melancholy hollows out his chest, as Mac stares at the dishes. Nobody is ever really  _ done  _ living, life just sort of ends, before you can put the dishes away, and other people have to accept that, as they clean out the house and put the dishes in boxes. But the dishes were still in pristine condition, albeit dusty. He washes them and then cleans the dishwasher out, all while Jack lets the deep cleaning vacuum suck out the dirt from the carpet. 

Afterwards, Jack tells Mac to come back to his place, since Mac had been staying at a hotel the DXS paid for, but Jack was moved into his place as of last week, and well, Mac had no where to stay now unless he wanted to pay the hotel. He agrees, and goes to Jacks. 

“I think I want to keep this all as it is,” he admits, gesturing to the ugly carpets before they leave. “And the uh… the wine bottles on the windows, and the- well, you get it.”

Jack nods. “Even the wall color?”

Mac nods. “Yeah… I just want… to keep it as it was for him.”

 

\- America’s Favorite Hardware Store: Home Depot, so Mac can fix the locks but he needs a Tool Box, Duh -

\- He is not in the Tool Box Aisle Anymore -

 

The most adult thing he’s ever done is walk around with a shopping cart alone in a home depot, while a toolbox sat inside of it like a dead weight. It was one of those really nice ones that came in a thick bag made of some sort of indestructible material, and he had gotten new shower heads too. He smiles vaguely at another customer as he walks down and along the aisles, looking curiously at the neon light wall fixtures, and the creative looking lamps- there was one chandelier that vaguely reminded him of the ‘uvula’ from Monster House, and he considered buying it for a moment. (He doesn’t). 

This leads to an aisle of paint chips and paint colors and Mac looks them over. He’s rather enticed by this vaguely yellow cream color, and he stops to look at it curiously. A worker is standing nearby, notices him, and approaches him, as if he were a small animal. Mac has never met someone so all knowing about paint, and well, he only really understood it from a chemist's perspective, he’s never had to paint a wall or a house. 

They tell him all that they know, and suggest similar colors, other colors, vibrant colors, dull colors, vague pinks, and vaguer purples. He decides vague colors are ugly, but white for the bedroom he’d be taking on wouldn’t hurt, consider it’s currently a disgusting mossy green- that seemed a right description, Mac thinks, and he considers that white would be very nice. And maybe one day he’d get that really gross looking chandelier and hang it in there. 

He ends up buying a deep red-brown, and a yellow for the living room. He considers for a second, that maybe he could paint the guest room a pink- and not the vague pink, that was like white tinted with just enough red to look pink, if you squint hard enough kind of pink, but like actually pink. Genuinely pink. 

Another day, he reckons. Then he brings the paint to the car. Today was painting day. 

He drives to Jacks, and leaves the car unlocked as he goes upstairs, and just walks into the apartment. “Come on, I left the car unlocked.”

Jack looks over from the TV with his brow furrowed. “Where we goin exactly?”

“My house.” how odd to say, how odd to think that Mac had his own house now. “I want to paint the walls. I bought paint.”

“You bought…”

“Paint. For the walls.”

“Okay. Then let’s get to painting before our dear friend Patty needs us again.” 

 

\- 3 days and 5 paint buckets later - 

 

Mac was alone in the house, sitting on the freshly cleaned carpet, thinking about how much he’d hate having to maintain it and how the red burgundy was atrocious, and how he just wanted to rip the carpet off and insert new floorboards. He could easily do it himself, if they just moved all the furniture out, he could take it off, and shine the floorboards, add some polish to preserve it, or just put in entirely new ones. 

That might have to wait though. 

The door is springing open, due to having no locks to keep them in place. He was replacing them, before he promptly decided to sit on the floor. Jack was in DXS today, he was handling something, and well, Mac wasn’t called in, so he was just at home, sitting on the ugly carpets- at least the burgundy wasn’t as bad as the green in the bedroom with the stucco yellow embellishments. Oh it was awful. 

“You know, it’s only proper etiquette to call your best friend when you come home,” he hears, and Mac looks up to see someone he hadn’t seen in a long time, standing there in the doorway. He can’t help the grin that spreads his face, scrambling to get up. 

“Bozer? What are you doing here- oh my god, I- I’m so sorry I never called-”

“I know you,” he says smoothly, the way he’s always been, pulling Mac into a hug. “Thinkin’ nobody wants to hear that stupid voice of yours, but one of the neighbors called Mama sayin’ that someone was around the house and I just knew it was you. Thought it was bout damn time you came home from the war.”

“Well… I was discharged last year, I stayed with my war pal and his family in Texas for a bit. They have a big ranch, you know. And I uhm… well, it was nice to just… cope somewhere like that.”

Bozer doesn’t prod, he just nods. “I’m glad your home.”

“I am too.”

“Now, I’m gonna need a copy of the new key, because no way am I letting you live in this big house with that big head of yours all alone. We’ll split up the bills, and I’ll take the bedroom I had when we were kids, you move into your grandads bedroom.”

Mac nods, and he’s glad Bozer is here, because when it came down to it, he probably would’ve just slept on the couch. 

 

The bedroom is dark, the curtains closed, the light filtered through the dust in a way that every dust particle was visible. Mac stands there, looking at the undone bed, the untouched cologne bottles, the close on the floors. The room smelled awful- like something had died in there. The closet doors were open. He flicks the light switch but he hasn’t turned the power back on yet- shit, how does he do that? He sighs, and leaves the house for the night. 

He’s the certain the mattress must be decaying, infested with bugs or something, and he thinks the headboard is long outdated. He knows he’ll have to get rid of them, as soon as humanly possible. Most of the clothes seemed to be dithering between life and death, just caving to the undone coils of their seams. Everything in here had stopped in time, and yet continued on, unfolding with the death of his grandfather, decaying as his embalmed body did underground.

He feels the tears well up again, but he swallows them down. He couldn’t do this tonight- clean out this room tonight. 

Bozer goes home, apparently he lived not too far from there, in Downtown LA in a chic apartment, and Mac goes to Jack.

Flopping on the couch, he’s real quiet a moment and Jack looks over from the kitchen before joining him. Offers him the plate of hummus, and mac shakes his head. Jack puts it on the coffee table and sits beside him. 

“So…”

“How do you open a phone line?” he asks. “And… what kind of phone am I supposed to buy? I mean, I have the one DXS provided, but that’s a temporary burner phone. I need like… a real phone, and I need a line- and you would think I’m a genius, opening a phone line isn’t hard but I have no idea how to do that! How do you open a line? And what about a credit card? What about credit? I don’t know shit about credit- or, beds. What the hell am I supposed to do with that bed?”

“Mac,” Jack says slowly.

“I don’t even know how you’re supposed to pay bills- I mean, how do I even turn the power back on? Who the hell am i supposed to call? I mean, the electric company duh, but who the _ fuck _ is the electric company? This is all such basic stuff, but I have no idea how to do this- I don’t know how to do any of this! And I need to know!”

“Slow down, hoss,” Jack says softly. “I can answer all those questions, but we just gotta move one step at a time. What bed, what do you need to do with what bed?”

“My grandfather's old bed, that room is rotting at the core, everything has to go- and where the hell do you put furniture that needs to be replaced? On the curb or something?”

“No, there’s companies for that.”

“So… do we bring it to them?”

“Depends on the place. What else?”

“Phone line, and Phone.”

“Get a durable phone, we’ll head to the Verizon tomorrow and work you out a plan.”

“Electricity.”

“We’ll get the number your neighbors use.”

Mac nods. “You make it seem so easy.”

“You’re lucky bills are online now. That’s easy, don’t gotta mail the check in or shit. Just make sure your bank account is all queued up.”

“Credit cards?”

“You’re 23, ain’t old enough to have credit yet.”

Mac laughs. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Jack says. “We’ll get you a card when I know you can handle it.”

“Right…” Mac sighs. “What if… what if I can’t do this? Can I get fired for not having my personal life together?”

Jack laughs. “You’re about to be the best damn operative anyone’s ever seen, and you think they’re gonna fire you because you don’t know about credit?”

“I’m a genius and I have no idea how credit works so… maybe? Doesn’t that lose my credibility? No pun intended of course.”

Jack laughs anyways. “I don’t think it does, I think you’re overthinking it. You’re gonna be fine kid. Besides, you got me to help you through it.”

“You mean it?” Mac asks and Jack nods.

“You old enough to drink yet?”

“Drinking age is 21.”

“And you are…?”

“23?”

“Aight, I’m gonna go grab the beer. You just relax on the couch.”

 

\- They’re in a Home Appliance Store -

\- Mac thinks this is the most Awful thing in the world -

 

“You drink coffee like water, so I reckon you’d need a coffee machine,” Jack says.

“Which one?”

“Any one you want.”

“What’s the difference?”

Jack shrugs. “Don’t really know. I don’t even like the stuff that much to know.”

“I mean these two look like the exact same coffee pot but one is from Kitchenaid and one is from…. I definitely can’t say that, I’m not going to try, and they’re like…. 60 or 500 dollars.”

“60 Dollar one still works. Long as it gets the job done.” 

Mac nods, picking up the cherry red coffee machine and putting it in the cart. 

“Now a blender.”

“What.”

“You need a blender?”

“I do?”

“You love smoothies.”

“I have no idea how to make a smoothie!”

Jack laughs, and shakes his head. “Then I’m going to make smoothies for you. See? Perfect use for a blender. Did we get a knife set?”

“Bozer has one. And he has utensils.”

“Oh right, you two are… old friends right? That’s nice that you asked him to move in.”

“I didn’t, he just sort of decided he was.”

Jack laughs, shaking his head. “And you just took it? Never took you for the type to just let things like that happen.”

“I’ve known him since we were kids, and… I think it’d be nice to just have someone to live with. The house is big, I know I’m about to sound like a war widow but, it’d probably get lonely.”

“You do sound like a war widow.” 

“It’s not my fault my husband died in the war,” Mac teases. 

“Sorry for your loss,” Jack plays along. They walk in silence for a bit, and Mac wonders if this is what it’s like to have a real dad, a dad who cares for him, and jokes with him, and helps him clean out the house he inherited from his dead grandfather. “Here we go, Blenders,” Jack says, breaking Mac’s silence. “Now this here looks like a real nice one.”

“I, again, don’t know the difference.”

“Blenders matter, see, because the blades gotta last, and if you want a blender that lasts you gotta get a real nice, high quality one. You know?”

“I mean… I guess?”

“Look, let’s get you a nice blender, and that’ll compensate for the cheap coffee pot.”

Mac agrees, because he really doesn’t understand the difference, so agreeing seems like the reasonable thing to do. They purchase the items and spend the day arranging the kitchen. “So I finally found a really good donation center,” Jack says, handing Mac the number he’d written up on a piece of paper, seeming to just have remembered it. “They said if you leave the bed out for Wednesday morning, they’ll take care of it. We can dissemble it tuesday night and just put it on the curb for them in the morning.” 

He nods. “And where do I get a new one? A mattress store?”

“Exactly the place.”

Mac nods. “What about the… the frame?”

“I don’t know- Ikea or somethin.”

Mac seems overwhelmed, Jack rubbing his back. “It’s okay. I’m gonna walk you through this whole thing, remember?”

Mac nods. “Yeah… it’ll be worth it when I have a house full of…. Blenders and stuff, right?”

“Absolutely.” 

“Oh! And we need to rip the carpets out this weekend. I’ve already bought the floor polish and asked the neighbor, who’s a carpenter, if he could help. He agreed.”

“And this is when?”

“Saturday.”

“Alright, then I’ll be there.”

 

\- Saturday Night in Holly Hills California - 

\- Jack went out to get them food - 

 

Mac and Bozer are on the deck, looking at the firepit and all the junk that was just out there. “I sort of forgot about the outside,” he admits and Bozer nods.

“I don’t even remember him owning most of this stuff. You think the neighbors just started putting stuff here?”

“No idea,” Mac admits as they circle around and end up on the firepit. “Would be cool if we cleaned this up, got it to work again.”

Bozer nods. “Like old times. Go swimming in the pool, then dry off by the fire pit.”

“After work, just kick back with a beer.”

“Hey, so what exactly is your job now? I know you have one, but you never said what it was.”

Mac seems surprised. “Oh uh… it’s a government funded think tank.”

“See? I knew you were going places, that is exactly the kind of job you deserve,” Bozer starts, going on as they jumped down into the lowered firepit and sat on the benches. “Man, you think you’ll ever go back to Boston, finish up at MIT?”

“And survive a winter there like that again? Hell no.”

He laughs. “What about Stanford or something?”

“I don’t know… it’ll be difficult, my job now is so demanding, I don’t think I have the time to keep up with the rigor of it.”

Bozer nods, looking to Mac. “Missed you man,” he says, bumping their knees together and for a second he can see them as kids again, 18, Mac was home for the summer, and telling him he was going off into the military. 

“I missed you too,” Mac says softly, the two smile. “It was hard… being out there. It always felt like bad things were going to happen, and when it happened, you were alone.”

Bozer looked at him sympathetically, Mac resting his forearms on his knees, leaning his cheek against his knuckles for a moment. “You’ve got Jack,” he says, trying to comfort Mac and Mac smiles, Bozer leaning down to, as if to put them on the same level. 

“Yeah… he didn’t like me at first, I hated him, so… fair enough,” he says and they laugh. “The fact we get along is half miracle I think… I don’t know, he’s- well he has no reason to help me this much, or to even insist if I got a job at the think tank, he did too. He does security, there, but- Nobody has ever really looked out for me this much. I mean, except you, but-”

“That’s different? Yeah, I know. Got a girlfriend or anything?”

Mac laughs. “Uh… no, but there’s this really pretty girl who was interviewed at DXS, is it bad I want her to get the job so I can date her?”

Bozer laughs too. “No. What does Jack think of her?”

“He thinks that I’m out of her league.” Mac pauses, sitting up again. “I know this sounds stupid, but, I don’t know… Jack is sort of like the dad I’ve always wanted. I mean, I don’t think he’d ever speak to me again if he knew that, but… I don’t know.”

“I don’t think he’d never speak to you again, he’s not that kind of guy.”

“Yeah but he didn’t ask to get hitched with some kid- it’s stupid,” he says again and Bozer laughs.

“Your feelings aren’t stupid. Anyways, can we check out the floors again? I still can’t imagine them without that carpet.”

Mac laughs. “I think I’m gonna gut all the carpets. It’s ugly and it all kind of smells.”

“Yeah, that soap didn’t help.”

“Oh! And the brown bear in Grandpa’s room, one of the neighbors said they’d wash it for us, because he’s a hunter and knows how to wash a gutted animal.”

“And you said?”

“If he can help get it out of there, we can wash it together tomorrow.”

They get up and walk in and find Jack in the kitchen, setting up the dinner on the counter, Mac seems surprised. “When’d you get home?” he asks, him and Bozer looking down at the newly polished wood as it creaks beneath their feet. 

“Just now, I was about to get you guys. How’s it looking out there?”

“Like spring cleaning is scheduled every day of April.”

“Did you call those people? For the bed?”

“No, we can do it Monday morning, tomorrow is bear cleaning day.”

“What?”

“In my grandfather’s room, there’s a bear. We’re cleaning it.”

“What do you mean there’s a bear?”

“Uh… there’s a bear? A giant, stuffed bear.” 

“Your kidding.”

“No?”

Jack puts down the container he’s holding, and goes to the bedroom, Mac laughing, and then harder when Jack laughs upon finding the bear under some coats.  _ You’ve got to be kidding me! What kind of Whack Job has a bear?  _

 

\- The Next Day, they’re cleaning the bear - 

 

Jack comes out with some boxes, as Mac and the neighbor stand over the bear, hands on their hips, water running down the broken pavement of the house. They seem perplexed, concerned, and Mac seems confused.

“What’s going on,” Jack asks, putting down the two boxes full of old, withering suits. Mac gestures to the bear, which is now a stunning white.

“It’s not a brown bear.”

“What is it?”

“A polar bear.”

“Why was it brown?”

Both Mac and his neighbor shrug, a car pulling up to the curb, but nobody pays it any mind. “What’s going on?” they hear, the voice of their boss Director Thornton. She was in casual wear, and hiking boots, boots that could get dirty. 

“Is everything okay, Patty?”

“Don’t call me that Dalton. And everything is fine, I just thought I’d help our boy here, since you two seem like you could use a hand.”

Mac nods, still staring at the bear. “Well… I have a bear. He was brown, but- well, it’s sort of like when you expect to give birth a girl, but out pops a boy instead.”

“An experience you’ve had, I’m sure,” Patricia says, raising her brow, and he nods, gesturing to the bear on the ground.

“It’s a polar bear.”

“Where you gonna put it?”

His brow furrows. “The door. Not like in the door, but you know… that wall? He’ll guard it. Maybe it’ll scare any unwanted visitors.”

Everyone laughs. The neighbor helps Jack bring it in, as Patty helps Mac load the boxes. She goes into the bedroom, and makes a face.

“I know,” he says. She nods, going over to the curtains and ripping them open, and then unlatches the windows and pulls them up. Patricia does this to each window, and Mac leaves and returns with the windex and the clorox wipes. 

“Are you keeping the bed?”

“No.”

“What are we gonna do with it?” 

“I have to call the donation people tomorrow morning.”

“Alright, let’s get to cleaning then.”

Six hours, nearing sunset, and a clean room later, his grandfathers room was cleared out. Bozer has made dinner, from scratch, and Mac needs a thorough shower. Speaking of showers, Jack has installed the shower head, and Bozer had shined up the back wall by the door to the deck, which was all wooden panelling. 

The mattress and the bed were rotting in disembled pieces in the garage now, rather than the bedroom. 

“We can take you to Ikea, tomorrow,” Patricia says. 

“Hey, that’s my job,” Jack says and she laughs. 

“I can come too.”

“Stop trying to take my kid.”

Mac looks up from the plate he sets down, like his whole world stops, but he just smiles, he’s never been anyone's  _ kid _ ; not since the safety of his mother dissolved. 

“You’re being dramatic, Patty can join.”

“See? Mac wants me there.”

“You yell at me for calling you Patty, but not Mac?” 

“Well, Mac isn’t annoying like you are.”

Bozer hands Mac a bowl of guacamole, and Mac nods, putting it down. Nacho night. 

 

It was late, and Bozer has gone home, Patty had long left. They sit there, together, by the unlit firepit in the darkness, only flashlights for lights because they’ve yet to turn the power on. “You okay?” Jack asks.

“I just… really miss him, it’s kind of surreal to live here and take all of his stuff out.”

“He’s proud of you, man.”

Mac smiles. “I like to think so… I just… sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong decision- he was so proud when I got into MIT, you should’ve seen his face. And then I left… all of that to go to the army. To help people.”

“And you did, you helped thousands of people, Mac.”

Mac nods, smiling. 

“There’s no shame in what you’ve done. If you ask me, I think you did the right thing. And I think that you’re braver than you give yourself credit for.” 

Mac tries to smile, but the tears welling in his eyes are overwhelming and Jack pulls him into a tight hug, kissing his head. “It’s okay,” he whispers, Mac sobbing in his arms. “Its okay.” 

 

\- About One Month Later -

 

Mac throws out the box, and turns on the light switch, and the power turns on this time. He beams and Bozer does too.

“We’re officially adults.”

“Officially.”

“Is Jack coming tonight?”

Mac shrugs, looking around his house, and before he can say anything, the door opens and Jack has come in holding 3 big neon lights. “We’ve got one last thing to do.”

 

The lights are set up, and Mac stands back, looking at the one in his bedroom, above his bed. He smiles, as they light it. 

He’s never felt more at home than he did now. “Pizza to celebrate?” Jack asks and Mac nods, Jack elbowing the kid playfully and Mac smiles brightly. 

“Pizza to Celebrate.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look! You made it this far!   
> If you enjoyed it, comments are always much appreciated  
> thank you so much for reading, it ALWAYS means a lot to me <3


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